Friday, July 6, 2012

The War on Chill pt.1

(Vampiric Empire, We Soon Be Nigh!, 2012)

I would like to say that we stopped something bad from happening but the truth is our eyes were bigger than our stomach. Amen to that.

In a scene straight from Dante's Inferno the world came crashing down. In a hazy display of twisted metal, smoke, and ashes and that contrast of gray and unorganic against a deep red of blood the message was all too clear. It hurt the ears to hear, it hurt the eyes to see, and we were all blinded, each and every one of us. Blind.
Before we rebuilt everything we decided to wait. Enemies were nothing, friends were nothing, what you owed this feller was nothing and what that feller owed you was nothing too. Everything was nothing. The borders were gone, the cities as well, just rock and rumble and shattered wood and bleeding ears. It was in all that chaos we realized we were all one, that whatever the hell just happened, had been happening, and led to all of this (points to a smoldering mess of humanity) was keeping us away from ever knowing that. That we were always together without words, without status, before language and just a moment before eye contact, we were together. What ever made us not, what ever made us once and no longer?
In that time after the war there was a lot of hugging, holding each other's hand and love making. Barely anyone spoke in those days, and where you had one person you had another, almost blind to language, religion, color of skin, or sexual preference. They were just getting along with each other. So much so that each other was just each, and so each and each was now just one. We were one.
It would be another few years before we started talking again and when we did we more or less barked, stared for a long time, and barked some more. The barks varied in ways of an actor changing their voice in accent, tone, intensity from role to role. Whoever knew a bark could whisper. And what was all said and agreed upon was that we needed to all chill out. Yes, chill out. Chilllllll Out. Somewhere down the line we forgot all about this. We got too wrapped around our concepts and our "status" that we forgot what really mattered. We got so worked up about it all and started to see nothing but superficiality that we lost ourselves and fed into our rage, blindly, and would get sick from hatred as it stewed away deep within over many many years. Eventually it became us. We moved out of the forest, into the fields and farmed. We started to work the land harder and started collecting excess for the long winters. And when we realized we had more than we needed we sold it to those who were having a bad year at the crops. Farms turned to towns, towns into cities, and eventually it wasn't food that we were trading but uselessly metals and sections of land as if we could sell what was already there. Eventually the concept grew deeper and further abstract until we were trading notes and those notes turned into numbers and those numbers only existed in our imagination. We'd fight for ridiculous things, for land, for commodity, we even killed for it, and we grew more powerful, but what power was it?
That scene from hell, that place we made for the part of us that wanted to see it all burn, for the devil in destruction to be realized and to want to do the opposite of good. When there was good and evil, when did we started to divide the land into shapes burned by war and blood? When did we start to believe we were so far from this place that we had come from somewhere else. We built pyramids and rested on top of them and looked down to the world from high above. We were reaching the skies, and so we studied them hard and long. We'd scare each other by speaking of evil, of the end of times, and of how to behave or else... We wore masks and pretended to be something we weren't. And if you were to ask us what exactly we were doing and why we couldn't tell you it was because we were distracted by something bright and far away, warm, and dancing in the moon-filled sky. It was something absolutely beautiful and abstract. It gave us hope and we longed for it, scratching away at it everyday to come closer. Closer and closer. And some of us would reach so far only to fall and be tramped by those who kept their balances well. Some of us even reached it only to discover it had been realized and that you had spent your entire life trying to obtain this, to have gained this, but that it was better off being un-obtained, free, wild, and without words or touch. To be left in our imaginations. For those who have reached their dreams did the fire not burn? Did the core of its energy not hurt to touch? And did you not try to steal it for yourself and keep it away from everyone else? Perhaps it was too much, and that there is no one to blame but what burns in our flames.
All we ever wanted was some peace on earth. Why did the bear eat my brother, why did the eagle steal my eye, and why did death take my parents away? Why am I so afraid that I am trembling now? Why are we so afraid of death that it is diseased? And that we are we so afraid to let go that we hold on so tight that we either destroy the very thing we are holding or it destroys us? The deep soil of the earth is dark and moist and full of life, it is the same as our blood, and it turns life in this world. It was here before me and it will be here after. And I can be burned, buried, or sink to the bottom of the sea and I will return to nothing from which I came, nothing.
The child said to the mother and father, "what is all of this?" The mother to the child, the father to the child looked at each other and looked back to the child and said nothing they believed in and then said, "what does it look like from down there?".

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About Me

My story is about trying to speak with my hands. Put a camera in front of them and I'll show you the places I've been to, put a typewriter in front of me and I'll tell you the people I have known, put a drum in front of me and I'll beat the rhythm of my heart. Over and over, until there is nothing left.